


She Who Lives On The Road To War

by ThatDamnKennedyKid



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Be Careful What You Wish For, Evil Tony Stark, Extremis Tony Stark, Female Tony Stark, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Steve doesn't stay in the past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-20 15:36:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20677775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatDamnKennedyKid/pseuds/ThatDamnKennedyKid
Summary: "Tony?" He breathed, unsure if he should even believe what he was seeing."In a manner of speaking." She smiles the same, but those blue eyes are ice cold.





	She Who Lives On The Road To War

It's been years since Pepper and Rhodey handled Tony's funeral. They'd taken their daughter with them and flown around the world, unable to stand in the shadow of Tony's heroism. 

Steve can't leave it, though. As tempting as it had been to stay behind, take Peggy into his arms and stay there. But it didn't feel right, the past. Everything about it was behind him, beyond him now, and he could never return to that life knowing what he knows about how it ends. He's never been the type to sit back and let bad things happen, let alone when he's cognizant of where and when. So he'd taken his dance, told her the truth, and walked back out of that house before the man she was seeing returned. He vanished back into the future and clenched his fist so hard the time GPS shattered. Here, he would make amends for the hell he put Tony through, for the doubt he held about her motives and intentions until the moment she died. 

God, that was so strange to consider. She was gone. Forever. 

This wasn't just dust into the wind, either. No, he'd watched Thor carry her charred and lifeless body away from the rubble, as stood beside them as they stripped her of the armour and felt it in his heart when they had to struggle around the rigor mortis. He would never see her dark eyes light up again, snap back to her snark and ass, have her at his back. He'd thrown it away before, where Bucky had been involved, but he'd always imagined he'd come back, that maybe she would come around and he could . . . try. 

But no, that was gone now. It was over. She was dead, and he'd fought against her the whole way, demeaning and belittling everything good she'd ever tried to do. And maybe she wasn't perfect - she was hard and brittle and had her own ideas and moral compass. She worked in the framework she knew, and in the end, he couldn't fault her for that. He'd done the same thing, with a healthy dose of life-threatening betrayal. It wasn't a surprise, in hindsight, that she'd never come, that she had no desire to seek him out. That she would rather leave things the way they were and try to make confetti out of the ruined pieces of her life and find what happiness presented itself instead of losing that little she already had. 

That's why, when the portal opened on the new lawn of the Avengers compound, he rushed out to see what it was. It could have been Thor, maybe the Guardians or some other force. Instead, out walked three people, two of which he'd sorely missed in the time since he'd lost them.

"Tony?" He breathed, unsure if he should even believe what he was seeing.

"In a manner of speaking." She smiles the same, but those blue eyes are ice cold.

He slowed to a stop, staring hard at her. She offered a grin in return, but it wasn't quite right. 

"Aww, what, didn't miss me?" Her voice cracked on her laugh, and he realized it was the manic edge to it that unsettled him. 

The other Avengers followed him out, staring in awe and horror. 

"Nat?" Clint managed, voice breaking. 

The Natasha that stepped out from behind Tony also carried those haunting blue eyes, but she is expressionless as she looked at him. Bucky had always had blue eyes, but these ones shone like lights, his eyelashes casting shadows on his cheekbones. He either doesn't recognize Steve or doesn't care. 

"Aww, Hawkeye. How sweet of you to remain after the massacre. I mean, last time you just kept piling a body count. I'm loathe to share, but you're more fit to the Merchant of Death than I am." Tony said with a sickly-sweet smile that did nothing to add warmth to her face. 

Clint flinched hard enough to jerk himself. His wounded expression cut Steve deep. "My family didn't do anything wrong."

"Neither had I, but people saw fit to take my parents from me." Tony snapped back. "What had Natasha done to deserve getting kidnapped and indoctrinated?"

Clint doesn't speak again, clearly feeling guilty. 

"Aww, does the baby not like people bringing up his serial killer gap year when he's done nothing to atone for it?" She mock-pouted. "Poor baby. Here's the thing, if I don't get to forget, you don't get to forget."

"You're not her." Wanda spoke up suddenly, red mist whispering between her fingers. 

"Aren't I, though?" The alternate Tony cocked her head, grinning wickedly. "Or do you not want me to bring up how the power at your fingertips isn't the only red on your hands?"

Wanda looked stunned. 

"Oooh, did you not tell them about all the people you killed for HYDRA? Did you never mention the genocidal plans you intended to carry out, even before you stole Ultron from me?"

"You're not Tony Stark." Wanda repeated, power flaring. 

"You're right. I would have killed you, not let Hawkeye's misplaced sympathies allow an enemy into my house. I wouldn't have given anyone the chance to care whether you lived or died."

Those chilled words make Steve's blood run cold. 

"I will drive you out!" Wanda cried before anyone had the chance to stop her, jumping and charging head-on.

"Wanda, wait-" Steve tried. 

Wanda blasted the ground, but the hail of energy was caught in silver plating. She floated, watching and waiting, but that silver wrapped itself around Tony, encasing her in a matte silver suit of armour with blue lights scattered across the chassis. Her hair remained free-flowing, the silver wrapping around her hairline and chin. Her eyes eclipsed that dominant blue, then the lights abruptly turned red.

"My turn." Tony replied, raised her hands and unleashed a torrent of firepower twice the size of Wanda's attack. Wanda landed somewhere near the front of the compound, a good kilometre from where they were standing. The red light faded back to blue and the silver retreated, slithering away to hide in the Reactor under her shirt. 

"What the hell." Sam muttered. 

"Like it? Endo-Sym armour." She shrugged. "Who knew bonding with an alien goop would mean power like this?"

"You're not human anymore, are you?" Bruce said softly. 

"I haven't been human since Extremis, honey." She winked. "And not that knock-off shit Aldrich Killian was peddling that turns you into a human oven. No, the real deal, the good stuff."

"What about them?" Clint gestured to Natasha and Bucky behind her. "When did you enslave them?"

"Enslave?" She laughed. "I forgot how funny you could be."

"I'm not a slave, Agent Barton." Natasha stared him down, eerie and still. "She saved me when you left me to die."

Clint's eyes teared up, but he tried his best to repress it. 

"Bucky-"

"Don't bother." Bucky spit, eyes glowing brighter. "She saved me from HYDRA. She saved us both from HYDRA."

Tony glanced at them, but a black version of her silver metal fastened itself around the two ex-HYDRA operatives. Bucky's colour was grey, while Natasha's was a deep red. 

"I don't know what you think you're gonna accomplish here." Sam spoke again, always brave. "You can't just walk into another universe and play god."

"I'm the intelligent, capable person on the planet. I'm not _playing_ god . . ." She let the silver reform around her, looking wild and dangerous. "All this time, I've been playing _human_."

All the present Avengers get tense, looking at her and the two following behind her. 

"You're not even from here. Why come at all?" The longer he kept her talking, the more likely she was to be less hostile. They didn't know what those suits did, let alone that the two behind her were capable of. 

"Well, that's simple. I came to give you what you asked for." She smirked. "Tony Stark as an enemy."

"Why? Why bother?"

Her cocksure smirk fell. "Because you killed her. You killed her, and without her, this world is going to fall apart. I'll save you from your own hubris because I saw someone better than myself in her, someone you didn't deserve."

He had no response for that - it was just true.

"So, I will continue on her legacy, and do what she loved you too much to do."

He felt dread coil in his stomach. "And what is that?"

"If I tell you, that takes all the fun out of it." She turned to Bucky and Natasha. "Let's go."

She took off into the sky, a streak of silver and blue, and the other two were swift to follow. 

They watched them go, then all turned to him, looking for answers, a plan, coordinates, anything. 

He had nothing.

* * *

"She wouldn't have wanted this." He said as she walked past. Bucky and Natasha - her lovers, he'd found out - stopped to scowl at him. Tony was unphased, continuing on. 

"No, she wouldn't have." She agreed flippantly. 

"She would have risen up to stop you. She would have hated you."

Tony turned back around, taking his chin in her hand and forcing him to meet her eyes. "Yeah, she would have. Next time, you'll know not to scrap the levy just because it leaks."

"Someone will stop you."

"Be careful what you wish for, honey." She walked away again, opening the doors into the sunlight and the empire she'd made out of the Earth. "Remember what happened last time you wished Tony Stark was gone?"

They closed the doors behind them, but they may as well have slammed them for the finality of the moment. 

"Is there anyone else?" Sam asked. 

He wanted to reassure Sam, convince him and himself that this nightmare would eventually end. The joy subjugation to Superior Iron Man brought about, however, made that seem unlikely. The corpse of Wanda, lost somewhere in the Pacific Ocean when Natasha put a fist through her chest, remained haunting. 

"I don't know."

* * *

At the edge of the lake, she stood looking down at a rusted hunk of metal, thumbing over the words. 

"That little machine is all that saved her life." Rhodey said, approaching her. "It's all that kept her heart beating all these years."

"Borrowed time." She replied. 

"Yeah, and I was grateful tor every second of it." He agreed, stopping at her side. "You can't keep doing this."

"You're right. I have to go back soon." She traced the nearly indistinguishable words. _Proof That Tony Stark Has A Heart_. "Just thought I would take a moment before I left."

"You can't take her back with you. I won't let you take her heart."

"You're right." She tossed it back to him, the broken and rusted out Arc Reactor. "You know, this isn't my first time here."

"It isn't?"

"Who do you think got her out of Siberia?" She raised an eyebrow. "I offered to let her join me. I'd take her from here and she'd never have to worry about anything ever again. Do you know what she said to me?"

"No."

"She said it didn't matter what I did, how good I made it, if I made the ad shit go away. _She would know_."

Rhodey ducked his head. "Yeah, that does sound like her."

"You were lucky to have her." She offered him her first sincere smile directed at someone other than James or Natasha. "And I'm glad you did. But keep it in mind, platypus, if you don't treat it right, I'm coming back for it."

"Back off, she was mine first."

She beamed. "That's exactly what I wanted to hear. I left something for you in Malibu. Have a nice life, Rhodey. Take care of Pepper and Morgan. I hope to God, for your sake, that we never meet again."

"Yeah, me too. A Tony Stark just doesn't look right with blue eyes. Not enough bambi to them."

She laughed, high and trilling. "Maybe not, but boy do blue eyes do it for me."

The Endo-Sym formed up around her and she took off, a portal opening high in the sky, where two other specs joined her. 

| | | 

He flew back to Malibu that night, after letting the old Avengers out of prison, and went downstairs into the unused lab. Dum-E activated as soon as he went down and beeped morosely at him. He regretted neglecting the bots, but it hurt so much to be down here. 

Sitting in the seat of the hotrod, however, was a vial and a note. 

_Dear Tony's Rhodey,_

_This is the most stable, low-dosage form of Extremis there has ever been. It'll cure your paralysis, because I know she blamed herself for that. Have fun making another baby - it'll be easier this time around. _

_ \- You Know Who I Am_


End file.
